


For Ishtar, for Iseult

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, And the Kids Who Want to Change That, Basically a Boatload of Shitty Circumstances, Clade Issues, Discrimination, F/F, F/M, Forbidden Love, Generalized Hatred, Head Cases, I Have a Lot of Feelings About This Story, M/M, Multi, Poverty, Racial Tensions, Street Fights, Troll Romance, hints of other pairings, kind of, self-esteem problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:15:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1676069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat was a nobody.  One more kid with zero potential doomed to live and shrivel up in the slums he was born in.<br/>Dave was a version of that same kid, minus the horns.<br/>John was a somebody.  But his friends thought there was a lot more to him than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Strider Incident

**Author's Note:**

> A story. A story which is not funny or thrilling. A story which involves political issues.  
> Yeah, this is going to go over great.  
> Shazzam, magic!

                Karkat, you have to understand, had about as much hands-on experience with love as he did with, say, using his toes to juggle whale lusii. He’d had exactly one crush in his life and it had been an unmitigated disaster that he refused to talk about. A full sweep after that atrocity had passed with Karkat hiding in his hive, refusing to interact with anyone who did not contact him through his internet connection.

                “Playing the field” was something met with wide-eyed distaste, and Karkat was at this point reasonably sure that his mutation had fucked his magnetism glands or something; he was not built for actual real contact with any sentient race. Or at least no further contact than was demanded of him by the fact that all his friends were lunkheads who desperately needed supervision and the other fact that Karkat was like the group moirail.

                Oh, but if anyone had the shame globes to try to call him a “pale whore” again, Karkat was going to break a lot more than just their face (if Gamzee didn’t get there first and Kanaya’s smile didn’t make their spine spontaneously shit itself out).

                So there you go. He’d been traumatized by his hormones and the desperate awkwardness that seemed to characterize them, he already had the makings of a spectacular agoraphobe, and he’d formed a tight-knit clade of a dozen shit-lickers based around Karkat’s issues with the people he liked killing each other. And yes, before you ask… he got along with humans.

                Not like he’d been trying to be a justice hero or some shit. He could care less about race relations, particularly any race relations being schoolfed to him by those presenters who tried to sound persuasively concerned and mostly just sounded like they had something uncomfortably pointy stuck in one of their shoes. _Please_. Maybe the whole human-troll tension thing was an issue elsewhere, but in Karkat’s remote and shitty neighborhood, you could be damn sure that no one cared about making a difference. Karkat least of all. He got into fights with humans about once a fucking week, tore them up spectacularly and walked away limping and cursing (or, on a more notable occasion, Eridan had to break up a fight and Karkat woke up in the hospital and had to be repeatedly assured that it was okay, Eridan had covered it, he didn’t have to pay for treatment he couldn’t afford).

                But even in the beginning, Karkat hadn’t actually hated humans, at least no more than he hated the majority of trollkind. He didn’t have the energy for it. He got into fights with hornless because they started it. There might have been some gray area involved, honestly, but when you had two groups of poor kids shoved into the same learning institutions, both groups convinced that they were trying to kill each other, of course everyone was getting their ass beat on a regular basis. This was an accepted fact.

                It all traced back to this incident with Dave Strider. That was when the squishy pink apes started to follow Karkat around. It went like this:

                Karkat was on the concrete, methodically checking to see if all his teeth were still in. Strider groaned a few feet away, bleeding kinda profusely in a ‘bro, you might wanna get that checked out’ way. Karkat did not want to be convicted for murder, in spite of his ongoing efforts to tear chunks out of anyone who looked at him cross-eyed, so he was glancing over, debating on whether he needed to intervene. Dave cracked an eye open (the shades were gone. Karkat had literally punched them off).

                “This is kind of really fucking stupid,” Dave observed.

                Karkat thought this was a fair assessment of all of their lives. His eyebrows went up.

                Dave sat up, wincing. Oh good, he wasn’t passing out from blood loss. Karkat was pretty happy on the ground, though. He hurt. A lot. Dave hit hard. “What are we even fighting for?” Dave muttered, getting perilously close to sounding like a racial equality Hallmark special.

                Or at least until Dave limped over and kicked Karkat in the shin. “You wanna go again?”

                “No,” Karkat growled, putting just enough growl into the statement so that if Dave confused this with whether or not Karkat was _able_ to go again, he’d at least had a fair warning.

                “Okay,” Dave said, hands in his pockets. “Want to go see what’s cheap at Burgerworld?”                

                Between them they had enough loose change for a medium pack of fries and a coke. Dave punched Karkat in the nose trying to steal his money and Karkat kneed him in the ribs for his quarters. They ended up glaring at each other across the tray with greasy fingers and shreds of potato hanging out of their mouths. It was better than having nothing for dinner again, at least on Karkat’s part. Dave was probably in the same boat. His shoes were mostly duct tape.

                Pretty hard to hate Dave’s guts after that, and it got to where they’d exchange wary nods when they passed each other in the halls. At one point Karkat found out Dave covered for him about being late to class (Karkat had been in school dammit, he was just trying to coax Nepeta out of one of her panic attacks—no fucking small task when Equius was out with mono or something. She’d holed up in the girl’s bathroom, the one place Karkat genuinely feared to tread. So he’d spent fifteen minutes knocking on the door and coming up with increasingly dramatic promises that if anyone gave her even the slightest increment of shit, he would end the fuckers personally). So Karkat obviously repaid the favor, stepped in about Vriska picking on this girl in Dave’s clade (or however the human equivalent of a clade was called. Whatever. Point was, Dave was always together with this kid).

                Yeah, Karkat was perfectly aware that this meant Vriska was going to torment him for roughly the next perigee, but whatever. There were more annoying people than fucking Rose Lalonde if Serket was cruising for a fight. Vriska would get off his case as long as Karkat gamely participated in someone else’s suffering, so he wasn’t too concerned. Let Vriska rant out her bullshit anger management issues and threaten to shove fork trines through Karkat’s eyeballs all the way to his brain. The look he got from Rose made Karkat sneer. He wasn’t doing it for _her_. Like he knew her at all.

                Anyway, word got back to Dave and then it was like this gradual descent into insanity. Before Karkat thought to pay it any real attention, Jade Harley was braiding Gamzee’s dreadlocks, Rose was helping Eridan with chemistry, and Dave was eating his lunch across from Karkat and talking about music. Karkat’s aggressively loyal and pro-survival (not pacifistic— _never_ pacifistic—they were just trolls kept in close quarters who didn’t actually kill each other, because Karkat had this wicked sixth sense for when people were flipping their shit) clade and Dave’s inner group of half-mad humans had morphed into an amorphous blob of general tolerance.

                Eventually Karkat didn’t even question being called at Fuck Everything o’clock in the morning because Jade hadn’t come home last night (he went with a yawning Terezi and they scoured downtown until Gamzee called to say he’d found her and she was fine and Karkat could breathe again). He gave up his lunch break a couple of times to bleed on things because Dave was getting called out by some crusading saint of an individual who didn’t like humans that got mouthy (they also didn’t like trolls who stood up for hornless, but frankly, Karkat’s clade was bigger and meaner than anyone else had been able to maintain and the fuckers should have known better).

                Karkat didn’t call Dave and Rose and Jade clade, though; because they were hornless and it would have been so weird. There were other friendly humans too, people Karkat viscerally hoped would survive high school, but Karkat didn’t know what pet _they’d_ had in the ninth grade. Dave, Rose, and Jade, Karkat went out of his way for. No infighting allowed among any of his close friends. He kept the peace. And when he stumbled on Dave making out with Terezi Pyrope—the infamous crush who had about culled the heart out of Karkat’s six-sweep old chest—he was weirdly okay with it.

                It was a big deal. Karkat had expected that Terezi’s developing an actual emotion would have him flipping his shit so hard it knocked the moon out of orbit.

                He went stumbling away to go punch something and cry some somewhat-less-than manly tears, but yeah, no desire to rip Dave’s head from his neck. There was this bit of Karkat that felt so utterly relieved. The cherry on the sundae was that it was Jade who found Karkat pacing alleys and kicking over garbage cans and he ended up crying on her shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world and—the best part, here—felt considerably less like shit scraped off of someone’s shoe afterwards.

                They were too human to be clade, but yeah. There you go.

                The rules were all unspoken. Dave and Terezi’s… _thing_ had to be kept secret. If the friendly humans asked one of the trolls to a party, the answer was no. Too many hornless, too easy to get ganged up on. Or, you know, if one of the trolls was wandering off with a group of hornless—didn’t matter if they were cool, Karkat would make sure someone was drifting after them just in case. He hadn’t kept everybody in one piece by ignoring who outnumbered who.

                Jade, Rose, and Dave could walk off with just Feferi bouncing between them, though. When Aradia headed off to the bathroom by herself, Rose trotted after her and it didn’t occur to Karkat to tell Nepeta to tag along. And when Dave started dropping hints about his wriggling day, Karkat actually considered it.

                He could feel Terezi’s gaze boring holes in the side of his neck, which made him twitch more than usual (Sollux started cackling because he enjoyed the pain of others). “Hey, it’s cool, man,” Dave said, not looking anywhere near Karkat. “Not asking you to move in. Just show up for an hour. Let me show off my outrageously boss sound system, and you know. Bring _loot_.” Dave shrugged a shoulder, the picture of giving no fucks. Karkat’s lips pinched tight together, Sollux kept snickering, and Karkat could tell Dave very much gave a crap about this.

                “I’ll think about it,” Karkat said. Which meant no.

                …Or was supposed to mean no. Dave wouldn’t quit bugging him about it (and Terezi was just being an asshole period). Dave promised that it was just a few people—all of them cool, Dave refused to be bros with assholes. He dangled the bait that a couple of friends that didn’t go to this school would be there. He’d talked about a couple of these guys enough that Karkat was curious. But at the moment, Dave was acting like Karkat’s group were the only friends he’d ever had. It was pathetic.

                It was also working.

                “Fuck me with a spoon,” Karkat groaned, and banged his head into the cafeteria table. “Strider. I’ll go. Cease this brutal campaign of attrition.”

                And because Karkat was going they all ended up heading over—except Feferi, but that was understandable; Karkat had not the faintest clue how Eridan had snuck out of his fancy neighborhood to get all the way out here—and they walked together. Talking maybe a little louder than normal, fingers drifting over the places where Karkat knew they guarded their weapons, even Terezi’s smile huge and a little forced. On all sides were sagging, busted-up old buildings and humans, watching them. This wasn’t a troll hive ring. Walking around here went against every bit of common sense they had.

                Karkat was about ready to crawl out of his skin before Terezi was saying “there it is” and rushing ahead—goddammit, the idiot—and they were all sprinting after her because fuck, someone could leap out of the bushes. The door opened, and there was Dave and just.

                He smiled.

                That was not a thing that happened.

                “You made it,” he said, which meant ‘you showed up’ and goddamn the little shit for looking so happy about that. Karkat felt a little tension melt out from between his shoulders and the trolls shoved forward together to give him congratulations (that’s what you did for human wriggling days, as per Aradia) and their shitty Dollar Store presents. Karkat met Dave’s infamous bro, and could see from the tilt of his head that he’d instantly figured out that Karkat was armed and where his shit was.

                Karkat, likewise, noticed a very large and very ugly sword sitting by the coffeemaker. Judging from what Dave said, this was less a statement about having trolls swarming his hive, and more just Dave’s bro being himself. They exchanged nods. Dave’s bro handed Karkat a plastic cup of something fizzy.

                And the thing was, it was actually pretty great. Rose’s sister was there and instantly won Karkat over by having a truly sick sense of humor, and this frankly _smoking hot_ college girl had baked a cake that Karkat would be dreaming of for the rest of his adult life. Gamzee was immediately exchanging recipes with her and Roxy had somehow roped half of Karkat’s friends into an impromptu chorus of dirty songs, and Dave was slow-dancing to their atonal shit with Terezi and kind of looked like this great big two-year old with how happy and just fucking relaxed he was. A few other humans showed up and Dave must have warned them or something, because they were on eggshells—polite eggshells, though, and they smashed them up towards the end, because you didn’t let a fanged troll collapse into your shoulder laughing (your neck, their teeth, and all kinds of uncomfortable proximity) without being insanely chilled out. Bro Strider’s boyfriend had brought a shitton of alcohol too, so at this point even Karkat didn’t have it in him to stay on high alert. He was pleasantly buzzed, not wanting to glare at anything, and had Sollux draped over his back and Jade commandeering his lap. Dave was managing to open gag gifts straight-faced and it was hilarious, and the doorbell rang.

                “I’ll get it!” Eridan exclaimed, like this was _his fucking hive_ and bounded over to it. New voice, and Karkat barely twitched. He was druuuunk.

                 Jade sat up though, beaming. As the latest partygoer showed up, she stretched her arms out and made grabby hands. “John!”                

                 Karkat heard a voice that sounded like it was wearing a huge smile to match Jade’s—and no one matched Jade’s smiles—go “hey.” Karkat tilted his head back on Sollux’s shoulder to look as John leaned down to squeeze Jade. She squealed and hugged him back.

                “Yo man, do you even have the capacity to not be late?” Dave was saying, and he sounded like he was grinning his ass off too. John. That was a name Karkat had heard before—he was pretty sure this guy was Dave’s best friend, with all the talking he’d heard. He should have been processing that, but he was kind of blindsided because holy fuck. Holy _fuck_. The kid was _gorgeous_.

                Not like, ‘pin that poster up and take yourself in hand’ kind of gorgeous. This was organic and raw—flaws that came together to create something inescapably real. He had Karkat’s hand drifting out to make sure there wasn’t glass in the way or something. John looked at him—eyes blue as choking, late afternoon light through blind slats, big and hammering Karkat in the gut where maybe he’d had a bit too much to drink after all. His hand dropped back down. All he wanted was to run his fingers through the sweat-slick black hair that dangled over John’s ears like overgrown weeds, to push their faces up together and try to lock their contours like fingers. Wanted to have that skin under his mouth and taste every vein he could see. Karkat was blushing. It hit him all at once.

                All at once, pow. His heart was racing.

                Jade giggled. “Oh wow, Karkat are you drunk?”

                Ugh. Shut up, Jade.

                John’s eyes twinkled like they had fucking Christmas lights lodged up in there. “So _you’re_ Karkat, huh?” His tone came layered with meaning. Yeah, fuck, Dave was John’s best friend. That tone danced the fine line between, ‘break him and I break you’ and ‘wow, he won’t shut up about you, so I’m kind of interested!’ He unwound an arm from around Jade and all Karkat could think was that it had dark hair dusting the backs and troll skin didn’t do that. Their fingers were touching—shaking hands—and Karkat had to be _drunk out of his mind_ , there was pure heat going down his spine.

                “Karkat?” Dave’s voice punched a hole through the fog. Karkat glanced over to see the younger Strider smirking at him. “You planning on letting go there, bro?”

                Oh fuck.

                So Karkat whipped his hand away and whacked Kanaya in the arm on accident. John laughed a little awkwardly but sprawled out on the floor next to him anyway, and Karkat resolutely stared into his treacherous beer bottle, because if he looked up, someone was definitely going to be giving him shit.


	2. License to Get Lynched

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD did I actually just update a fic that I'd already started on?!? Check for pigs flying. Tuesday is opposite day. Do not trust the color aqua.  
> In other news, Karkat's attempts at romance are likely doomed to failure, so read and enjoy!

                By the end of the night it was official—Karkat was really. Really. _Really_ drunk.

                John had a laugh that made his guts clench, and John was laughing **all the time**. He’d started a pandemic. If the party hadn’t been going well before, now it was in hysterics—Karkat was concerned with making sure people were breathing. Himself included. His jaw was sore from grinning. John talked a mile a minute once he got started, faster than anyone Karkat had ever met. Karkat was practically on top of the human, couldn’t stop gravitating closer until Gamzee looped an arm around his shoulders and took him back to solid ground. They were talking video games and movies and stupid school shit and embarrassing the crap out of Dave, trading every story guaranteed to make him groan. Karkat was gulping down beer to drown the butterflies, to give his lips and fingers something else to worry about, he couldn’t stop laughing and he was coming across as… such a tool.

                Fuck.

                He would definitely regret this in the morning.

                The trolls were obviously not leaving tonight. Half of Karkat’s clade had gotten roaring drunk and wouldn’t be walking straight if they could walk at all; that was not a condition good for wandering through unfamiliar human hive rings. Bro Strider, possibly the only person who was not drunk, considering that even his boyfriend was a giggling octopus of limbs pushed up against his side, got out a bunch of blankets.

                And this part was embarrassing. But.

                Karkat distinctly remembered marshalling his idiots into nesting.

                Look, Eridan and Vriska were probably the only ones who could afford sopor regularly, but that didn’t mean that any troll wouldn’t get violent if they didn’t sleep with something piled up for them to burrow into! So yeah, of course Karkat was nesting his clade. Like… their one and only moirail. All ten of them (shut up). Equius got belligerent about having to nest with a big group because Equius was an ass. Karkat, drunk as fuck, shooshed him like they were serendipitous and got him curled up all meek and blushing between Nepeta and Tavros. Dave was slumped on the floor near Terezi, murmuring softly and exchanging kisses with her. Karkat stumbled over, grunting as he nudged Dave into the nest (the part of his brain used for piling tetris wasn’t so alcohol-soaked it wasn’t working, which was great because Karkat hadn’t ever tried to nest more than five idiots at a time and somehow this was working out).

                Dave’s face, when Karkat nestled him into the pile. Ha. It was funny and Karkat couldn’t stop cackling, rearranging the human into the sprawled out troll limbs and making sure he had blankets tucked around him. Terezi snuggled into Dave’s stomach, purring happily at her new pillow. Karkat’s fingers wound up in Dave’s hair. “Whoa there, Karkat,” said Dave. “You sure? Group snoozing is part of your crazy troll family shit, ain’t it?”

                Karkat snorted, and redirected Eridan’s elbow (such a pile hog). “You comfy?”

                “Yeah man.” Dave’s smile was crooked. “…This is kind of cool as fuck.”

                “Shoosh,” Karkat muttered, because clearly he hadn’t embarrassed himself enough today. “Happy wriggling day, fuckface.” Terezi laughed softly as he leaned over to kiss her matesprit’s forehead. _Clade_ , Karkat was thinking. Fuck yes. He had so many feelings for this dumbass, and he left Dave to it. He had more humans to herd into the pile, and this somehow seemed like a vital part of this evening. Jade wouldn’t shut up—squealing about how cool it was and how she read about this and how didn’t this make them hivemates?—and then the minute Karkat looped Aradia’s arm around her, she was completely unconscious. Rose had somehow nestled in against Kanaya without Karkat noticing—Jane and Roxy were somewhere else; they’d gone upstairs after Dirk and his boyfriend—and John grinned as Karkat grabbed him by the wrists, towing him over.

                “You are so weird,” John observed, with a voice you used for finding a twenty dropped on the sidewalk. He let Karkat walk him over, and Karkat slumped down with him, exhausted and oversaturated with warmth and laughter and _homeyesgood_. He towed a blanket over them, legs tangled with Vriska’s as the blueblood immediately curled up against Karkat’s back, mumbling about warmth. Karkat could hear himself purring his fucked up mutant _krrik-krrrik-click_. Dave’s foot was in his face. He’d just made the most convoluted interspecies orgy of a nest and his chest was full of Corona and sunshine. John’s face was close enough to touch and Karkat didn’t remember if he’d taken advantage of that or not.

                He woke up with the inevitable hangover, wincing and groaning in the back of his throat. His thoughts were clear enough to acknowledge: human hive—Strider smell—massive clusterfuck nest. Then he blinked his eyes open and John was drooling on the floor and oh Jegus fuck, Karkat wasn’t even drunk anymore.

                _Swoooon_ , went his pan. And then throbbed with pain. _Ouch._ Ouch, ouch, hangovers sucked.

                He extricated himself from the pile before his thinkpan could make any logic leaps between ‘he slept with you and no one died’ and the impulse to grab John and lick him clean. What Karkat really needed was to scrub his mouth out with approximately a pound of soap, because unpleasant things had died in there. It was still pretty early considering the late night they’d had, and a fond look around the room assured Karkat that in the middle of the wrapping paper shrapnel, abandoned plastic cups, and frosting-smeared paper plates, everybody was still sleeping peacefully. Well-nested, and unlikely to enter a murderlust. He was off-duty for a while.

                He crept upstairs to the water-stained bathroom, passing an open door—huh, Bro Strider’s bedroom. He saw a naked back between snarled sheets, and at least two pairs of feet that weren’t the right color to belong to that back, and then Karkat turned his eyes away. Wasn’t any of his business (didn’t mean he wasn’t blushing). When Karkat came back down, Dave was up, shades notched into place again, sort of cradling Terezi and stroking her hair as she snored like a buzzsaw.

                Karkat paused on the stairs, bits of him melting and other bits going prickly with old hurt. Dave looked up like Karkat had made a noise. Nodded. Karkat nodded back, creeping over, bare feet slippery against the carpet (Karkat’s shitty hive was all unfinished wood). “Drink?” He asked in a whisper, because he wanted one, and he wasn’t making Dave pull away from Terezi for all the caegars in the world when he was looking at her like that.

                “AJ,” Dave replied. Karkat rolled his eyes. Predictable. And wow, the fact that he knew what AJ meant was lethal to his self-respect. Karkat dug around in Dave’s fridge until he found some, poured them both a cup and crouched next to him. Dave gulped it all down at once. “You knocked ‘em out,” he observed, nodding at the pile of dozing bodies. “I haven’t seen anybody so much as twitch a pinkie finger.”

                Karkat sipped his juice more slowly. “Well, they worked themselves up about this, the dumbfucks. They’d better be tired after that many shenanigans.” Dave smirked at him. Karkat glowered back. “ _No_. I’ll have you know, I was completely calm about every moment of this.”

                “Thanks,” said Dave, not meaning the juice, cutting through Karkat’s bullshit effectively. Grudgingly, Karkat dropped his scowl. Dave murmured, “You know, I do kind of have a clue what it means that you shoved us all together last night, bro.”

                “Shut up,” Karkat offered, which made Dave grin at him and hold his fist out. They thumped their knuckles and Karkat thought several depressingly sappy things, before he ended up going with, “I’m glad you like fries.”

 

                The rest of them woke up gradually—Dave started playing host once Terezi was squirming around—so Karkat pretty much just shoved people towards the bathroom and tried to figure out who wanted food. At least half the group had been reduced to muzzy What Is Life? monosyllables and required his assistance. John was one of the last people to wake up. Karkat was secretly glad. He liked looking at him, and he didn’t think he’d manage that so well if John’s eyes were open. When John did wake up, he yawned and rubbed his eyes, blinked up at Karkat. Smiled with drool crusted to his chin. “Oh, hey.” His voice was hoarse with sleep.

                “…Hey,” Karkat went, like a complete moron. “On a scale of one to cull me, how fucked up are you?”

                John’s lips quirked. “I didn’t drink, shithead. I feel great.” He stretched—Karkat’s eyes glued themselves down to where the fabric went taut, strips of skin crawling out and crap, why did he have to arch up like some kind of cat? By the time John sat up, Karkat’s face was flaming and he had no idea what he was rambling about, only that it was making John laugh these half-stifled giggles, like he was hiccupping, eyes squished up with mirth, and Gamzee was staring at Karkat too. Fuck.   

                “Wow,” John observed, voice shaking with pent-up laughter. “You are even better sober.”

                Karkat’s face still tried to combust and he told John exactly where he could shove his approval a lot more dramatically than usual. By the time John wandered off to get provisions from Dave, Karkat pretty much wanted the floor to swallow him. Also, for his mouth to be stapled shut. He was the literal worst at this kind of thing. Lust was the one where Karkat wanted to have his bulge shoved in someone as many times as was feasible in a 24 hour period; the one that made sense. ‘This kind of thing’ had him off-kilter. In the beginning Karkat had been stunned by the Would You LOOK at That Magnificent Creature thing and now he just… fucking wanted to roll John up in warm, soft things. Like a whole pile of pillows. Hold his damn face like something too expensive for Karkat to own, then kiss him until he moaned like they were starring in their own porno, yeah, let’s not even pretend this was fucking pale either.

                John glanced back at Karkat from the kitchen and brightened when he saw Karkat looking. He gave a goofy little wave that Karkat should have wanted to punch him for, and Karkat’s hand came up instead. He waved back.

                He was thinking about how much he wanted to sit and hold John’s hand and watch him drink orange juice.

                Gamzee was still staring. Fuuuuck.

 

                In the end they went out, the whole group of them, grimacing under the sunlight and the scrutiny of Dave’s neighbors. Yawning and bickering and complaining about growling stomachs.

                Karkat hoped this wasn’t going to bring too much shit down on the Striders. The part of his brain that he couldn’t turn off knew that troll and human kids weren’t allowed to be pressed up tight together. The way he was looking at John alone would get them both beat to fuck if anyone out-clade caught on. But if Dave cared, he didn’t show it. He had Terezi on his arm and then something happened—something pissed him off; maybe he heard a neighbor muttering—because he cupped the back of her head so all her ratty hair was spiked out from between his knuckles, and Dave was kissing the troll girl on the sidewalk like he gave not a single fuck. Karkat’s jaw dropped. Terezi grabbed Dave’s ass. Karkat couldn’t move and John was laughing.

                Vriska ended up towing Terezi away, for which Karkat was grateful, because he didn’t have it in him to so much as twitch. He, uh, hadn’t been expecting that. Not even in the ‘my ex’ kind of way, but if that wasn’t license to get a bunch of hungover teenagers lynched, he didn’t know what was. Terezi stared Karkat down before he could say anything and Dave gave the most supremely douchey nod to his neighbor before they were moving again. Karkat was in the minority here—most everyone’s mood had picked up with that, and they were laughing and chattering and then you had Karkat in the back, worrying and chewing his lip. Word would spread.

                Not that Dave and his bro weren’t tough as nails, but—

                “Karkat!” John exclaimed, elbowing him in the side. His hair was sticking up all over the place and Karkat nearly swallowed his tongue wanting to be the reason it was so messy. “Have you ever had human pancakes?”

                They ate at IHOP. Dave paid for practically all of it with his birthday money (Karkat had pretty much lint and a nickel to contribute and Kanaya leaned into his side silently until his face had cooled down). Pancakes were fucking amazing. John inhaled them. He was covered in syrup, and Karkat refused to be outdone. John smeared butter over his ear while he was distracted and made Karkat choke. He was not even slightly apologetic about it, the little shit. Karkat kicked him under the table.

                They were still taking swipes at each other when they hit the park—everyone had eaten, they had nowhere to be, and Karkat wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to split up. How John managed it after devouring roughly his body weight in pancakes, Karkat didn’t know—but John and Nepeta flung themselves at the swing sets shrieking with boundless energy, and Tavros doggedly wheeled after them. The sun blazed down and most of the grass was withered from a drought. They were probably still getting all kinds of looks from people who weren’t making fucking idiotic racial statements.

                Karkat didn’t remember ever being this happy.

                Eridan had been making calls at the IHOP for twenty minutes—and when Feferi bounded up, Karkat knew why and had to bite his lip to stop from grinning like a fool. He flicked one of her fins in greeting. Yes, this was right. She should be here. Feferi leaned down to give Karkat a kiss on the cheek.

                “Who’s she?” John asked when Karkat ended up pushing him on the swings for a while. Nepeta, next to them, had climbed the chain and was hanging upside down from the bar, swinging Tavros from her perch.

                Right now Feferi had attached herself to Jade—Karkat was not surprised, given the amount of IMing the girls did—and had Eridan squashed to her, looking hilariously smug. “That’s Feferi.” John glanced up and Karkat cut it to skeleton info, “She did something to convince her lusus to let her slum it with us, instead of going to one of the private schools. Don’t ask me why. Guess Eridan told Octomom some kind of bullshit, and that’s why she’s out here.” With Feferi, everything that felt like home to Karkat was complete.

                “What about Eridan?” John asked. Yeah, you didn’t have to be real perceptive to pick up on the fact that Eridan wasn’t exactly from poorside. Nothing in the world would convince Eridan to give up his rich kid habits. He could have blood trailing from his nose to his knees and he would still insist on designer silk shirts. Karkat’s mouth quirked.

                 “What, you don’t think it’d look bad if the school board didn’t send at least one highblood in with the trash? Eridan has the misfortune of being kind of a pain in the ass, so he’s the one they ditched.”

                 He was also Karkat’s pain in the ass. Karkat had spent about a week hating him for his blood color. That was how long it took him to start to respect the kid marching into class with his chin up and a broken collarbone under his shirt, saying that he’d ‘forgotten’ his textbooks (everyone knew the gutterbloods were taking it out of his hide). He’d been out of practice not being a jerk, but underneath his shallow attempts at perpetuating hemocaste order, he was more than decent. Karkat could rely on him for anything, and the only real fight they’d ever had was when Eridan tried to pay for stuff of his—split lip, two black eyes, and not the slightest question that they were still friends.

                John looked up. “You guys sure are a weird group.”

                Karkat’s lip curled, fingers tightening on the chains.

                So his clade wasn’t high class. They were the trolls no one wanted, for one reason or another, and fucking dumb as shit as far as Karkat was concerned. But they were determined to make something of themselves. Karkat was convinced there would be a day when his clade looked back at every fucker who had ever sneered at the garbage or tried to kill them for being too low and weak, or too high and embarrassing—and Karkat’s whole clade would be laughing their goddamn heads off because they’d made it to the end. They’d won. And until such a time as that, Karkat’s job was to protect them, to make sure they kept their fingernails clinging, to fiercely take on every asshole that came their way because that was what Karkat was good for. That was his calling. He wasn’t smart like Sollux or motivated like Vriska—didn’t have Nepeta’s creativity or Tavros’s talent for helping others. He had pretty much been a dead loss before he met them, before they gave him something to be.

                He was _theirs,_ bar nothing.

                And he was perfectly capable of tearing off heads for them. John was toast if he thought he could say shit about these people.

                John looked back at where Aradia had just tackled Feferi. Sollux was trying to get Eridan to hand over his phone, stick-limbs flailing out at Eridan’s elbows while Dave did a rap commentary on it that had Gamzee laughing into his shoulder.

                John’s voice came out soft, “Gotta say, I’m kinda jealous. Prospit sucks.” Karkat forgot to push the swing.

                Hang on. He wasn’t talking about _Prospit_ -Prospit, right? The private school? The kind of place that Karkat wouldn’t get within twenty feet of without getting arrested by security and roughed up until he beat it? Dave had mentioned knowing a couple of those kinds (and Karkat had assumed he was full of shit). Karkat sucked in a slow breath between his teeth, looking at the back of John’s head.

                Karkat put it together. There was Dave who lived in what was probably the human version of poorside (did humans call it that?), who smiled at John like everything was right in the world. Jade, who hugged this kid like they were two pieces of the same person, who had tight smiles between the days when she had lunch money, refusing to take more than a bite from anyone else’s food because “she was on a diet”. Rose, who worked two jobs and still found the time to stay at the top of the class. Karkat had seen Aradia give her a jacket and then pretend she was too stoned to remember, and Rose had let her. He’d never seen Rose look so fond.

                John, who went to another school. Prospit, huh? _Oh_.

                Karkat remembered to push the swing. Words lay heavy in his throat, none of them wanting to come out. It would be pretty fucking great if he never had to answer, if he could just feel this twisted sympathy and envy and longing in his gut, if he could put his arms around John and have that be enough to make him laugh again. The chains creaked.

                “You should come over,” Karkat finally said. “Come hang out with us.”

                “With a bunch of trolls?” John’s voice was outlined in scorn. Karkat ignored it. Parroting someone else’s words didn’t mean shit compared to nesting with them, to laughing with them all morning, to the kid Karkat was getting to know, getting damn close to falling flushed for. Like he’d never learned his lesson the first time.

                “You fit in,” Karkat said at last, awkward as fuck. The three humans Karkat fucking cared for were clade whether they were gray or not—and John was clade after all of eight hours of fucking around, like magic. He slotted right into where Karkat’s heart needed to beat faster, and where they all needed to laugh and lighten up. He fit in because they’d all been waiting for him by accident. Karkat’s throat closed from the feeling, and he didn’t have better words to convey it. If he was condescending, it was only because John should have known and felt it too. He was gravity, Karkat wanted to hold him tight… He didn’t know how to say that, Jegus.

                The swing creaked back and forth. John was laughing all of a sudden, doubled over, huge claps of sound that made Karkat reel. “Oh my god,” he wheezed, stomping his feet, shoulders shaking. Karkat stopped pushing before he shoved the human off. John hacked out another peal of laughter, hit the ground with his head tossed back to Karkat—a flash of dilated blue, the human was bright red—and Karkat grabbed the back of his shirt to haul him forward. “Ack, hey wait!” John protested, flailing his arms around. “Where are we going?”

                “Come meet Feferi, you shitstain,” Karkat muttered, shoving John in front of him so the human wouldn’t see his blush.

                Feferi reacted to John like a puppy with a new toy, and John wasn’t quiet again until the sun was setting and this time they had to actually go home. Karkat gave Dave a one-armed hug and didn’t bother telling him that if shit went downhill, he and his Bro could come hide out at Karkat’s. Dave knew. John was going home with the fucking fish tribe (and Karkat was trying really hard not to resent Eridan and Feferi for this; they lived around the same area, of course they’d go home together) and before they split up, Karkat sort of hovered—handshake? Again? Would that be weird? He wanted one. If he could get it.

                John hugged him, and squeezed until all the butterflies were flapping like mad. There was thunder in Karkat’s ears and John’s cheek pressed to his, still a little sticky from pancake syrup and sweat. You’d better believe Karkat hugged the shit out of the human, growling a little when John tried to pull away. Nope. One mo— _five_ more minutes. Terezi had to prod them apart with her canes and John went on his way grinning. Karkat thumped shoulders with Rose. She was perfectly capable of removing the hand of anyone who laid a finger on her, but Karkat and Gamzee still walked her to her doorstep, and Gamzee got it in his head to bow and kiss her hand like they were in a storybook, which made Rose grin. Karkat followed suit, smirking at her curtsy. After the day he’d just had, he might never be capable of being serious again. Nothing felt quite real.

                Gamzee was coming over to Karkat’s hive, of course. Gamzee’s own hive was really nice and fancy, with tiled floors and all the light bulbs working, and it was this horrible, empty place that Karkat would never want any wriggler to spend a night in. Gamzee pretty much lived in Karkat’s shitty two-block hive. They took turns in the manky recupercoon (which hadn’t had slime in it since Karkat was four, but Karkat didn’t really need it and when Gamzee really did need it, Karkat pacified Gamzee just fine), and Gamzee got the bottom two shelves of the cabinet while Karkat got the top two. It worked. It was better than finding Gamzee sleeping in ditches or having to calm him out of these terrifying rages that had used to leave Karkat genuinely afraid Gamzee was going to start killing people.

                Gamzee was nice enough to wait until the homework was done and Karkat was curled into the coon to observe, “So. You feeling the wicked flush again, huh brother?”

                “Oh _goddammit_ ,” Karkat groaned.

                “I’m thinking that everyone of us what got a sniffnode done caught onto that.” Shit, no. Karkat wasn’t pheromonal. He’d have noticed, Gamzee was full of crap, end of discussion. The clown’s pan was fried. “…Or oculars.”

                Karkat stuck his head over the edge of the coon, sloshing a little water over the edge. He glared Gamzee’s eyes were blissfully closed in the pile, cause Gamzee was good at being an asshole. “Okay, so tradition dictates that I deny any such attraction vociferously and provide logical counterarguments to every indication of red interests that you provide.” Karkat waved a hand as Gamzee snickered. “Then we spend a wacky montage together that ends with the human’s tongue down my throat anyway, right? Super. Let’s cut to the chase, you useless waste of air. There are feelings, I don’t want to discuss them, fuck you, and goodnight.” Karkat sank back into the coon, growling under his breath.

                Gamzee murmured, “So that means you’re really up and liking this kid aren’t you?”

                Karkat thought of swing set chains and John’s sleeping face and laughter that came in time with Karkat’s heartbeat (cause his heart was speeding). Butterflies exploded through his abdomen. He felt wrong for having them, and his voice creaked. “You have no idea.”


	3. Such Calamity

The Striders must have handled the dealings in their neighborhood somehow, because Dave kept coming to school as monotone and ironic as ever. It was a relief. Karkat was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but maybe it wasn’t coming after all. Maybe no one cared that much.

The humans and trolls kept their clade tight. There were more parties—Karkat tried to refuse on principle, at first. One was worth it; two was tempting fate. “John will be there,” Dave offered, waggling his eyebrows and FUCK did everyone know about how Karkat felt? What, had he tried to haul John to the nearest concupiscent platform and just didn’t remember it? Karkat glowered, enraged, and also convinced.

_“I’ll be there.”_

“Starts at five.”

_“Fucking fine.”_

All of Karkat’s friends got their jollies off at his expense.

John was there, though, and Karkat’s heart stopped all over again. “Karkat!” John exclaimed immediately, spilling grape juice all over them both to grab Karkat in an enthusiastic hug that smelled like soap and formaldehyde. _Formaldehyde,_ and Karkat was inhaling like he intended to get buzzed off the stuff. John’s smile was huge when he pulled back—and he barely even pulled back. He left their sides squished together and had his hand plastered to Karkat’s back, shoving him into the house and launching into an explanation of what had happened during the biology dissection.

There was pounding music, writhing bodies, alcohol, and Karkat knew in his soul that Gamzee had weed and was distributing it merrily like an indigo, bony Santa Claus. And here was Karkat, stuffed into a kitchen chair, trying to match John’s rapidfire speech and jumping every time their knees brushed. Trading jokes and school stories and very different laughter—that was the difference between them, childhood and croaking—and sipping fucking grape juice out of the same cup, like kids making friends in the second grade.

It was simultaneously the best and worst experience of Karkat’s life, and he would later feel bad for pretty much ignoring the fuck out of everyone that did not have the name John Egbert, but at the moment, the background noise was static and John’s smile went straight to his gut and fizzled like fireworks. Karkat didn’t expect to enjoy the conversation as much as he did, to the exclusion of sanity and even forgetting how painfully awkward he felt sitting across from fucking human Adonis. John’s voice kept rising like he couldn’t believe it either, how easy it was to be dorks together.

Karkat walked away with a chumhandle, a lot of grape soda going half-queasy in his stomach, and the knowledge that he was probably going to start releasing pheromones in science class, which sucked.

There were other humans at Dave’s parties, sure—Dave introduced a few more friends and Karkat didn’t have a problem with them or anything, but he didn’t have a burning desire to fit them into his clade the way he did these four. There was a small, confusing part of him that wanted to try to grab Roxy and Jane and Dave’s bro—maybe even the boyfriend, who was growing on Karkat now that he wasn’t commenting on nubby horns—but he thought that was mostly bullshit, and just came about because his humans were so attached to them. He didn’t know them that well. Besides, he was a mutant, and his instincts on the subject were probably fried.

_His_ humans, now; they were a different story. Karkat had made the right call. He was proud of it. The bond between them was getting cinched tighter all the time, until he caught himself trading ‘mine’ for ‘hornless’ and ‘human.’ Dave, Rose, Jade, and John. Karkat’s. Theirs. Good. It was fluid and easy the way it was supposed to be, the only exception being sometimes John was… problematic. Karkat didn’t know if it was his crush or the fact that John was cut off from them so much of the time, but he could make Karkat’s stomach lurch like someone had stomped a boot in there.

It showed in little things. Little awkward, obnoxious details. Like how Karkat would get too keyed up and say shit he had no business saying (insults were the lifeblood in his veins, okay?)—and John just laughed. He didn’t fire back his own retaliation, didn’t play off it, just stalled. And there was a peculiar way John had of talking about people, about himself—Karkat would always laugh right along with him, because it was supposed to be funny. “You’re not really an idiot, you know,” Karkat muttered, gruff and trying to sound like he wasn’t blushing so hard it hurt, because maybe then it would be so. John punched Karkat in the shoulder. His laughter sounded outright _unnatural_ , so Karkat was chalking that up to awkwardness and Karkat’s total inability to flirt, even when he wasn’t trying to flirt. Ugh. Ow. His stomach was twisting.

And then John lapsed back to pranking someone or making the whole room collapse in on itself with hysterical giggles or rambling with huge eyes about the movie he saw last night and how it was soooo good and Karkat would agree to rewatch it on the off-chance it might have become less shit. They’d inevitably fight about it for hours on pesterchum. Karkat would provide lists on why it was still shit. John would reply with the intellectual equivalent of ‘neener-neener-neener’. Gamzee would read over Karkat’s shoulder when Karkat started growling and punching his keyboard like it had personally offended him. Karkat had the gorgeous little dipshit between his ribs those days. That was when they were clade.

“You gotta tell him,” Gamzee said one night, because he fancied himself some kind of relationship expert now because Tavros had started sending him smileys again. Karkat tried to elbow Gamzee off—he was in the middle of a very important statement about where exactly Nic Cage could shove his soulful eyes—but the troll persisted, twining around Karkat and grinning down at his nose. “It’s all kinds of chewing you up. Gotta get it off your chest.”

“No thank you,” Karkat growled, grabbing a horn and using it to steer Gamzee back out of his line of sight. “I prefer to live with the possibility of hope, instead of being shot down to crash into a million fucking pieces all over this lawnring.”

“Don’t gotta get all dramatic like that,” Gamzee said—somehow Karkat had ended up petting his horn and Gamzee was happily leaning into it. “The motherfucker is all kinds of into you. I can tell.”

Karkat wasn’t quite self-hating enough to just ignore the way John’s smiles got bigger every time he walked in the room. If John was around, they always seemed to wind up together, annoying everyone around them while they tried to out-talk each other. John definitely… had some kind of special emotion reserved for Karkat. But Karkat barely understood the quadrants of his own race, let alone the others. Humans had a lot of platonic things they did that confused Karkat straight to fuck because WHERE exactly was that not pale?

Also, Karkat had no illusions. He didn’t want John pale. He pitied him into raptures, and he’d probably pale mack on him like every other member of his ingroup because Karkat was incapable of keeping it in his pants, but no, pale pity didn’t make you want to hold someone down and kiss him breathless. It didn’t make you wonder how his expression would change if Karkat whispered every tender thought that came to mind for this boy, every nuance of why Karkat was so recklessly entranced. It didn’t make you imagine over and over how you might take it to the bucket for that first time with him, how his hands would feel, if he’d call your name.

He really was flushed to an embarrassing degree and fuck Gamzee for reminding him of this just when the ranting had gotten good. Grumbling, Karkat started hammering the backspace key.

“Sides,” Gamzee murmured. “You know if someone dumb shoots you down, you got all manner of brothers and sisters who’ll gather up all them growling pieces and glue them back together for you.”

“That’s so reassuring,” Karkat grumbled caustically. “Thank you. My confidence has been bolstered exponentially by your words.”

“Just letting a motherfucker know I care,” Gamzee said, smacking his lips against Karkat’s cheek. Karkat glowered at the screen and began to type a reply that would better showcase his ability to be tolerant and generous (important qualities in a matesprit).

Of course, within ten minutes he was calling Nic Cage a heroic shitstain on the nightmarish abyss that was John’s cinematic tastes, snarling at the screen as Gamzee chuckled and John laughed at him from the other end of cyberspace. Butterflies swirled, Karkat’s heart beat faster, and he had to backspace a heart off the screen before he gave himself away.

\---

“I’m gonna tell him,” Karkat announced at lunch, not quite aware that he was saying it out loud. He’d been having a very intense telepathic discussion with his tuna fish sandwich, which now had ten neat holes punctured in it from his claws. Eridan glanced up first.

“Wwhat? You’re going to tell John you’re flushed for him?”

Not a single person at the table so much as twitched at this spectacular breach of privacy. Karkat, in spite of himself, felt kind of peeved. He was subtle, dammit! Dave was shaking his head like he knew what Karkat was thinking. Fuck Dave, though, he was an _idiot_.

“Sit back down,” Eridan suggested. Vriska snickered. Karkat flicked a piece of bread at them both.

\---

You know the shittiest part about deciding to ask someone out? The part where you actually had to follow through on your terrible decision. Suddenly you were incapable of speech. You spent every conversation squirming in your seat. You got jumpy as fuck.

Basically you embarrassed the shit out of yourself. John was giving Karkat a weird look. Karkat didn’t blame him. Karkat figured that at this point in time, everyone’s best interests would be served by him beating his head into the table repeatedly until he was unconscious. So far all he’d managed to do was flinch whenever John poked him and get spectacularly tongue-tied beyond ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘oh fuck me with a pole.’

“Are you feeling okay?” John asked, arching an eyebrow.

For the record? No. No Karkat was not. His stomach butterflies were in danger of eating their way out, he kept realizing the rapid tapping of his foot against the floor was getting perilously close to wrigglerish trembling, and for some reason Karkat could NOT fucking stop licking his lips. He had no idea why. He wasn’t exactly expecting John to respond with sloppy makeouts right this minute (hoping? Yes. Expecting? Nope). His voice kept trying to climb up to a pitch to rival even Nepeta’s.

He needed to be culled. Physically needed it. For science.

“I, er, uh,” said Karkat articulately.

So that was an abject failure.

\---

_No_ , Karkat decided. _I can’t do this on Pesterchum. That is shitty. That is a shitty coward’s way out, and I don’t find it tempting in the least._

Backspace, backspace, backspace.

\---

Karkat had fled from John’s company after the millionth round of Watch His Lips Too Closely And Lose Track of the Conversation, HAHA, So Much Fun and was now skulking on the stairwell, watching John from afar and feeling guilty. John outright projected crestfallenness about having been ditched. Fuck Karkat for being such a wuss. John probably thought that either Karkat got sick of him, or worse, that John had befriended an insane asylum escapee. Officer, have you seen this troll? He who ran away from normal conversations and made stalker eyes at you from the staircase.

There was something so incredibly _wrong_ with his thinkpan.

When he looked away to see Rose sidling next to him, he sighed. Karkat was effectively screwed now; no point in hiding it.

She spent a moment both observing Karkat and then tracing his line of sight before she crouched down next to him. They shared a moment’s silence before she observed, “I have seen you take on troll twice your size and get perilously close to being made a thin red jelly on the back wall of the gym.”

Karkat looked over at Rose, because that was an astonishingly productive train of thought, even for her.

“I have also seen you—and very subtly, I assure you—drive bullies away from me with nothing but the raw force of your glare and, pardon my saying it, your sheer shame globes.” Rose’s mouth curved into a smile that made Karkat feel like he should be fidgeting and staring at his toes. “Is _this_ really so hard for you?”

Yes. Yes it was. This involved feelings, things which Karkat hated immensely.

“I can almost guarantee that no response you receive will be as uncomfortable as this relentless self-flagellation.” Rose stood, presumably to leave Karkat to his self-flagellation. “You should tell him. This is distressing for us all.” Karkat glared. He didn’t remotely care about _their_ distress. He cared about his _own_. He cared about the fact that the most beautiful organism on this planet was right there, waiting for Karkat to stop going to the bathroom for thirty minutes, and that Karkat was going to explode from wanting to do things to his mouth.

Rose grinned back widely. “I, for one, am cheering for you.”

Damn her and her courage-inflating manipulations.

Karkat talked himself back down from the stairs and when he was in front of John, it hit him all over again. Karkat wanted to feel the strong curve of the human’s jaw with his tongue. To bite the tendons of his neck that stood out when he was excited, to listen to John breathe and be able to say that was what he was doing, that he was getting off on it like he was. “I have something to ask you,” Karkat said in a rush, trying not to glare. Failing abysmally. “It’s—a favor, kind of. You don’t have to do it. At all. In fact, if you don’t want to, don’t.” John’s eyebrows when up. Unf, fuck Karkat liked it when they did that. This wasn’t fair. Why did he have to look at John while he was trying to talk about his feelings? “Not that I wouldn’t be… grateful. If you did.”

‘Grateful’? Well, Christ, don’t lay it on too thick, Vantas, you might break something. FUCK KARKAT’S LIFE.

“Uh, okay?” John tipped is head to the side, looking like he wanted to laugh. “Just so you know, I draw the line at killing someone.”

…Well, how much worse could this be than murder?

“Go out with me,” Karkat blurted out. Worse than stumbling, it came out a threat, too sharp. Karkat threw his eyes skyward, beseeching the fuckery of this plane of existence to cut him some slack, just once. Turn his hormones off for five seconds or something. Eyes fixed on Dave’s shitty, patched-up ceiling, Karkat gritted out, “ _Please_.”

But it was not his imagination. The room had turned into a nightmarish vortex of spinning death. John wasn’t saying anything. Karkat waited as long as he could stand.

Eventually, Karkat took that breath and forced his gaze back down. He found John looking like he was waiting for Karkat to finish speaking. Not like he was listening, though. He didn’t look entirely disgusted; he just, you know. Looked like Karkat had just punched him in the eye and was waiting for the next hit.

“Uh,” John’s smile appeared just a little too quick. “Wow! That’s kind of sudden.” Alright, so Karkat had never expected to experience this kind of emotion, but he was suddenly really annoyed that there was someone left on this planet who Karkat’s brand of subtlety actually worked on. Butterflies converted themselves quietly to lead. Karkat’s stomach plummeted.

“I mean you’re always calling me a dumbass and turdface and stuff,” John reminded Karkat with half a giggle. “So as far as jokes go, it's not really too convincing. Or wait—is this a dare or something? Pretty good, but I’m not falling for it!”

Oh, okay, yeah. So John thought Karkat was fucking with him.

Karkat desperately wanted to go back in time and punch his past self in the kidneys repeatedly. Could he have managed not to be an asshole for just once in his life and said… Fuck, it could have just been ‘you’re cute.’ That was trite, that was normal, people said that every day without destroying their own romantic aspirations. He didn’t have to annotate the full speech on why the sight of John’s face made his heart start corkscrewing like a cartoon jet plane. He could have maybe not shot himself in the foot.

John thought it was a joke—and self-preservation had Karkat agreeing instantly. He nodded, stretching his lips into some grimace of a smile. _Yes, it’s a joke. I am such a fucking joke_.

Here came the last spasm of courage before dignity won out, and he found himself fighting for it. “It’s not a joke,” Karkat managed to force out, tightening his hands into fists just to stop himself from nodding like some kind of puppet device. John’s eyes flickered down—no, no, _no_ , Karkat wasn’t threatening him, why did this have to go so wrong?—and Karkat choked out a little desperately, “ _Look_ , you don’t have to. I just think you’re really—“ _say cute, say something not awful_ “—appealing—“ FUCK “—and I want to—“ _die on the spot_ “—maybe—“

FUCK THIS.

“John, goddammit,” Karkat groaned, holding his hands out between them like his feelings were in an invisible box that he could just hand over instead of having to talk about it. “I _like_ you. I am asking you out because I like you. Does this concept make you cringe with horror or not?”

John’s eyebrows drew together—that probably was the worst confession he’d ever received. Because maybe John was just as much a dork as Karkat, but he didn’t look the part. He was beautiful like a building towering overhead, or an apology. You looked at him and you saw something Karkat could never be, you saw glory, and Karkat knew that, he wasn’t _stupid_.

“Karkat,” John’s voice was quiet. He didn’t say anything else. Just left that hanging between them, reminding Karkat who he was.

It had never worked on him before. It spurred him onwards instead, a little flicker of denial to match how numbly terrified Karkat was of these feelings. He had half a grin on his face, cocksure and cowardly. “Not going to answer?  Never thought I was that overwhelming.”

John looked at him for a long moment, long enough for Karkat to choke on his own wriggler bullshit. John said carefully, precisely; “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

And you know what that was? That was an answer. _Good_. That’s why assholes asked questions. It was what Karkat had needed to hear. Karkat gave a short nod before hurt could come clawing its way out of his throat in the worst possible way, realized that everyone was a lot more shut up than they’d been before he started talking—nosy little shits—and he took a breath, lifted his head, and refused to let his voice shake when he told John, “Okay, thanks for saying so.”

John’s face was blank, eyes not quite meeting Karkat’s. “Karkat…”

“Just need some fresh air,” Karkat muttered, keeping his breaths steady. “Back in a sec.”

Dave’s doorstep was empty, of course—everyone was inside. Karkat sat, head between his knees, taking deep breaths. If he’d been at home he probably would have been rubbing the shit out of his horns, but he wasn’t that damn pathetic, to do that where anyone could see. He knotted his fingers in his hair and focused on breathing.

Funny how Dave’s hivestep had become someplace that Karkat felt comfortable being on his own. Must have been the familiarity of it, or maybe he was just fucked up enough that he didn’t care.

Because he shouldn’t have been comfortable here. This was a not a hivering for trolls.

_Karkat_.

And when he looked up, he saw some human kids across the street.

Well. ‘Kids’ might have been putting it mildly. Big kids. Bigger than Karkat. He didn’t like the fucking looks he was getting from them. The growl curled out of his throat automatically. One of them tapped a bat—a fucking _bat_ , like they needed to struggle for clichés—against the pavement. Another one was rising to his feet. Karkat mimicked the motion, emotion sucked into the rising aggression. Part of him was reaching for the brakes. This was stupid. _You’re not yourself right now. There’s a reason for real moirails, like what Nepeta and Equius have. Where it’s reciprocal. You are_ not _yourself right now_.

Most of Karkat was slamming the accelerator.

He hurt and he knew the best way to handle that was to multiply out more hurt. His bare feet padded down the steps, stalking closer.

A hand closed around his shoulder and Karkat threw a punch—glasses clattered to the ground. His knuckles stung from the bite of them.

Shades.

Dave’s naked eyes cut him, colder than Karkat had seen in a while, because Karkat hadn’t thrown a punch at him since the parking lot. Dave’s hand squeezed tighter, made the bones in Karkat’s wrist ache. “You want to work out some stress, I’m game,” he said. “But I really don’t think that’s what you need right now.” The words didn’t quite compute. Was Dave saying he’d help Karkat fight the kids with the bat, or was he saying he was about to kick Karkat’s ass across his lawnring?

“Karkat,” Dave said again, loud enough that Karkat could see more than his lips forming the words. “Knock it the fuck off. That growling is giving me a headache.”

This hyped up, looking away was like pulling teeth. No other way to cut the growl off, not looking into Dave’s eyes and seeing the whites— _human, so **human** , danger, too close._ So Karkat blinked his eyes down and coughed himself silent, fingers flexing loose at his sides. At the first dulling of the aggression, he felt sick all over again. Fuck. He’d hit Dave. Karkat grabbed the human’s chin, tilting his head up to catch some of the pallid streetlamp glow—didn’t look bad. Looked like it would bruise—

From across the street. “Tch. Hornhumping faggots.”

Dave got his arm around Karkat’s neck before he could spin around. He had his other arm out, probably flipping the assholes off, but he was still towing Karkat back inside like their insults didn’t matter. They did matter. Karkat dug his heels in. He couldn’t—

“Shades,” he muttered, dipping to gather them. Dave’s grip stayed tight around him, the fucker. “Can you just—!“

“There’s a closet upstairs, and nobody will bother you if you sit in there and keep quiet,” Dave said. Great. Still transparent, huh? Karkat shoved against the human’s chest.

“Go bother John. He’s probably—“

“Not who I’m worried about right now, dude,” Dave said, and propelled Karkat through the door and directly into a waiting Terezi. Karkat got pushed up the stairs, feeling like a pinball. John looked up as he walked and their eyes met—Karkat’s gut clenched, he tried to smile, he was so fucking sorry—and the stairwell cut John off.

“Want me to send Kanaya up here or something,” Terezi said, clearly about to strand Karkat in the Strider bedroom. Karkat was staring at the bed, oddly enough unable to stop thinking about the peek into Bro Strider’s life that he’d seen before. He shook his head, and Terezi must have left, because Karkat was alone. He’d already forgotten about the closet and just decided that he should try to paste his head into a corner and never move. So he did that. A lot of deep breaths followed. Shakier breaths followed those. He did not punch the wall.

Thank god for Dave. Karkat was a fucking moron.

Things wrapped up and Gamzee pried Karkat away from the walls. John was waiting downstairs, hovering at the door. He looked up when Karkat came down, and there was none of that sterile emptiness to his expression. He looked so miserable that if there was any part of Karkat that was pissed at him, it was drowned in empathy. “Fuck,” Karkat began, meaning _I’m sorry,_ and John grabbed him in a hug before he could get any further. Karkat probably wasn’t allowed to like it so much. But he did.

“It just, it just won’t work out, and,” John was babbling—and damn it, he didn’t have to. Karkat didn’t want to try dating John with anything less than his full consent. He’d been hoping for—well, something else. A chance. It was possible that Karkat could magically metamorphose into someone worth dating, if extremely unlikely. But it didn’t matter what he’d hoped for.

You want to know whose fault this was? Karkat’s. Maybe he should have, huh, not fallen ass over horns for the random human and then shoved all his screwed-up feelings onto him?

And that thought was so indulgently self-loathing that Karkat snorted.

“John,” he managed to interject, patting John’s back brusquely because anything else was going to feel too much like having glass wedged in his protein chute, “Look, just forget it. We’re still friends, right? Then we’re good.” John looked up. Karkat needled, “We _are_ still friends, right? Fuck you if you say no. I’ll chain you up and feed you to the local barkbeasts.”

John’s smile wobbled. “Yeah—definitely. We’re best friends.” He held out his fist. Karkat wondered briefly if Dave learned it from John or vice versa, thumped their knuckles with no air in his lungs. When he looked up, throat dry and knowing he needed to get the fuck out of here, Dave gave him one of his nods. Karkat felt irrationally less like a fuckup.

“Better not have put holes in my wall!” Dave bellowed after Karkat and Gamzee. Karkat did not turn, but performed the double fingered salute skyward, marching on. Gamzee did the same, chuckling under his breath. Karkat could hear John laugh. Everything below the horns ached. He felt himself smiling anyway.

\---

Okay, but if his friends didn’t stop cuddling him, Karkat was going to lose his mind. He got it. They were concerned. How nice. Anytime they wanted to stop, that would be lovely.

\---

Yeah, really. No. He was done with the hugs.

\---

“Nepeta,” Karkat said, peeling the smaller troll off of him. “I will fling you out a window and dance a rage jig on your shattered body.”

She brightened, clapping her paws. “Yay! Karkitty is feeling better!”

He _was_ feeling better was the thing. Yes, his second crush had ended as miserably as the first, but at least this time he hadn’t dragged it out for sweeps of bitter disappointment. He got told no, and big fucking deal. John was still talking to him. He’d lost no clade. Karkat discovered he could still hug John without his eyes rolling up in the back of his head and foaming at the mouth.

“I think you’re projecting,” John insisted, passing Karkat the popcorn. Jade tried to shush him—they were supposed to be watching a movie—and John flopped a leg on top of her head (Karkat resolutely ignored that apparently John was flexible, oh gog yes). “I think you’ve got some massive crush on, like troll Gerard Butler. And you picked me because I’m the opposite Troll Gerard Butler. The anti-Butler, if you will.” John cast wide, innocent eyes Karkat’s way. “I am only in your heart to spare your poor, delicate troll feelings.”

Karkat considered this, and the fact that John insisted on discussing this right now, in front of everybody. “Can I punch you? My poor delicate troll feelings thing this will aid in our recovery.”

“Gladly,” John chirped and held out his arm. Karkat flicked it with a finger and made John cackle.

“Shh!” Equius huffed at them.

Obligingly Karkat raised his voice, “If I was going to have a movie crush on anyone, I would choose Troll Will Smith.” Oh yes he would. Troll Will Smith was the shit. Karkat ticked off of his fingers. “He’s funny as fuck. Smart, charming—“ Not to mention all kinds of attractive.

“See? I was right.” John grinned. “I am none of those things.” Karkat stared grimly down.

He wanted to kiss the goofy right off of that face.

“Yes,” Karkat sniped instead of doing the kissing thing. “You’re a hideous to withstand, painfully dull. A sorry excuse for a sentient lifeform that oozes inanity onto all surfaces over which you have the least bit of traction, like an amoeba of unattractiveness.”

John giggled again, spilling poporn into Sollux’s hair. “Yeah, there you go!”

“ _Shhh_!” Feferi flared her fins at them warningly.

“You’re annoying,” Karkat muttered sourly. He was jealous of Sollux’s hair. What was his life coming to?

“Oh wow!” John exclaimed, bouncing in his seat. “That was an awesome explosion! Did you see that one?” Karkat had to grudgingly admit that it was so beautiful the angels would forever weep at this cinematic perfection.

“You have to ask.”

“SHHH!!”

\---

Being jealous of Sollux’s hair, of course, had nothing on this. Karkat was frozen in the entryway, carrying a two-liter of soda because with as much time as they spent at Dave’s, he felt a physical need to contribute in some way. Money—not something Karkat had typically, but he had been eating over here a lot and that meant there was extra at home. Payback, nice and simple. If Dave didn’t want it, he’d just hide it around the house somewhere.

But first he’d watch John Egbert with his hands in some human girl’s hair, tongue down her throat, kissing like the fucking world was on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I recognize that you all hate me, but can I just take a minute to enjoy Dave and Karkat's bromance? I am enjoying the bromance. So much bro. So much mance.  
> (The next chapter is gonna take a while too okay I'm so sorry)


	4. Like You Want It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, been a while! Guess who just got their FLASH DRIVE OF ASTONISHING WONDERMENTOUS EXCITEMENT?
> 
> The capitals are subtle, right? Totally subtle. The subtlest.
> 
> Anyway, this is not my favorite chapter, buuuuut I think that's more because of the subject matter. Tell me if you disagree and the writing just sucks. Such information is helpful! Also, feel free to continue to complain to me about how much you want to tie John to things and make him talk about his feelings. That's always fun.

Karkat’s first kiss had been a seventh grade travesty. Seriously, the most notable feature of that night had been Aradia’s adventure-themed birthday cake. The sugar had buzzed in Karkat’s veins, everyone blushing rainbow shades, a pop bottle was produced, and the wrigglers huddled, keeping secrets from lusus with hushed, shivery voices. Palms were wiped on pants, nerves jangled, nobody wanted to be chicken. The bottle spun. Karkat still remembered that he’d only kissed her on the lips to make Terezi jealous. For a minute he’d been in love with his veins full of starlight—but then he’d scampered back quick as he could and wiped his mouth. A candlelight flicker of pity was insufficient for his purposes. He wanted the whole cinema screen experience, wanted it to break his heart, (and wanted it to be Terezi Pyrope). Middle school was all about that kind of disappointment.                  
  
And that was not the way John Egbert kissed this girl. He kissed like he wanted nothing but this, well graduated to high school.

_This is an opportune moment for you to turn right the hell around_ , advised the little voice in Karkat’s head. _This is the wrong hive._

But he couldn’t move, so he just stood there, with his soda, and genuinely thought it would be nice if someone just came and put their fist in his face. It would hurt less. Not even black quadrant, just black, numb anger. He wanted very, very much to be out of control. Jade found him like that.

She was nice enough to take away the soda clenched in his fist. She was also nice enough to put her hand over Karkat’s eyes. Karkat sort of vomited out all of the air collected in his chest. “He’s been drinking,” she said apologetically and Karkat had enough time to be confused as fuck—John drank? As in alcohol? Since _when_?—before she had him by the hand and was tugging him into the living room with everybody else.

Someone needed to give Karkat a gold star for not growling at John’s girlfriend. Jade’s fingers were still pinned firmly over Karkat’s eyes, but Karkat could see a sliver of the world through them. And of course John— _fingers in her hair, ears stuck out for someone to kiss, only Karkat really didn’t want her to_ —pulled away like there was a fucking homing beacon to Karkat’s misery.

“Karkat!” John exclaimed. Jade swore impressively. Karkat stepped out from under her hand, bracing himself to smile, to make nice about the whole _surname You, first name Not_ thing. John stumbled closer unsteadily enough that Karkat reached out to grab him—but no. The girl steadied him first and John laughed.

“Wow. Um. Stronger than I thought.” He grinned up at Karkat like this was the best day of his life and let’s discuss the fucking soul of pathetic that was Karkat Vantas. Because you know what? John was in love. True fucking love, not with Karkat. Karkat’s throat closed and he wanted to tell John congratulations, to twist his words pale—who wasn’t Karkat Vantas pale for, after all? Give the girlfriend John’s quadrant rules, threaten to hunt her down if she showed what was Karkat’s any disrespect. Give him away.

He said fuck nothing and Jade wrapped a crushing grip around his wrist, like she was warning him not to.

“Wanted to introduce you,” John said. And then came the girl’s name, and Karkat got called John’s best friend and John slung an arm around Karkat’s neck to whisper in his ear, “Hehe, and just what are you and Jade getting up to with your freaky blindfolding games?”

Karkat gaped at him. The sting of resentment he did not want directed at this person came up hard— _you think I’d get over you in less than a week?_ “I,” he said, scrambling for some deflective sarcasm. Oh fuck, how to pretend to be a normal, not-devastated troll? Quick, say something clever!

“Um,” Karkat croaked.

Jade kicked John in the shin. “ _Bye_ ,” she said pointedly. John waved merrily, oblivious to it all. Jade threaded her fingers through Karkat’s and dragging him off. Which was very nice of her, really, because at this point Karkat was torn between various actions of utmost stupidity, among them seeing if he could seduce John’s girlfriend. Which didn’t even make any logical sense, but there you go. Kiss her so John couldn’t.

Jade tucked him between her and Terezi. Terezi didn’t say a word, merely wrapped Karkat’s fingers around a plastic cup. He threw it back and it burned going down. Thank Jegus.

“Fuck,” he wheezed at his kneecaps. He held out his glass for more. Sollux, across from him, looked slightly pitying. He should have been laughing at Karkat’s pain. What was this even.

“Jeez,” Jade groaned through her fingers. “Karkat. If you had a cell phone, I could have warned you. He always gets like this when he drinks.”                  
  
Karkat did not want to process things like words. Karkat wanted to be devoured by sentient floorboards. His eyes automatically redirected—John was stumbling around with his girlfriend, both of them giggling like wrigglers, possibly trying to dance. John looked so delighted with every step he took and remained upright. As Karkat’s chest went tight with wanting to kiss him, the girl leaned in and did the work for him.

Yeah, he could see where this kind of behavior would need to come with a warning label. Still couldn’t afford a cell phone, though. Not unless Crabdad let him get a job.

“I didn’t know he had a girlfriend,” Karkat managed. His attempt at speech came out monotone. “Now I feel like an asshole.”

Terezi burst out, “Wait, that’s his girlfriend?” And everyone got very quiet and Karkat’s stomach started to churn.

“Oh _fuck me_ ,” he groaned, stuffing his face into his hands. Snarled into the heels of them as his eyes tried to pull some kind of watering, punched-in-the-stomach reaction to it. John had stared at that girl in there like he was in _love_ with her, like she meant everything, and he gave _her_ a chance because of what was in the bottom of his cup. Suddenly alcohol was the last thing Karkat wanted.

“Why is he even drinking?” He heard Rose mutter, which was a good question for when Karkat as less in danger of throwing up all over everyone.

“Well maybe—“

“It’s fine,” Karkat said, trying to make Terezi be quiet—she was about as horrible as Karkat was at trying to make people feel better. There were only so many judicial references Karkat could take in this delicate state before he started throwing punches.

“It’s not fine,” Jade said firmly. When Karkat looked over at her, she’d narrowed her eyes to hard strips of green. “You know what? You should be mad at him, Karkat. What he’s doing to you is really, really shitty.”

Dave rejoined the group. He froze at the sight of Karkat scrunched up between the girls, then took a long look over his shoulder. Karkat had made the mistake of looking too. John and his girlfriend had fallen back into the kitchen chair. She was still pretty, and John still liked her more.

“Ah,” Dave said slowly, adjusting his shades. “Well, fuck.” Karkat looked up at him, hoping he had something more pertinent to contribute. Dave flopped down next to Sollux.

And oh great, now they were both pitying him. Karkat’s life was officially over.

Dave snorted after a moment. “Oh my god, John is going to hate himself so much tomorrow.” He gave Karkat a dry grin. “Prepare yourself for the apologeddon on your pesterchum, dude. He’s going to break the world record at speed-typed distress.”

Karkat pasted on something grotesque enough to pretend to be a smile. “Cool. I’m gonna use the bathroom.” It wasn’t even entirely an excuse. There was every chance that Karkat needed to forcibly eject the contents of his stomach, and discussing John really wasn’t helping. He picked his way out of the sprawled group as quickly as he could, waving off Vriska when she moved to intercept him. Karkat took a lot of deep breaths.

Equius found him camped out in the bathtub. Karkat just looked at him. The curtain was pulled aside, but maybe the universe was cutting Karkat a break and he’d turned invisible.

“Ah,” Equius said. Karkat waited hopefully for him to go away. Equius sat down on the edge of the tub, fidgeting nervously with his hair. He put his hand on Karkat’s shoulder for a minute. Karkat stared at him flatly. Once Equius deemed him sufficiently comforted, he withdrew and leaned against the bathroom wall while Karkat tried and failed not to have emotions.

“Are you going to get into a fight?” Equius asked after a moment.

Karkat glanced up. Equius’s distinctive shades stared back. They were more craft glue than actual glasses at this point, but Equius was never giving up on them, not after the lengths Nepeta had gone through to get them. God, that story. If ever you needed a reason to believe in true love, there it was. Designer shades, and Equius’s lusus had been sick since Karkat had met this weird blueblood kid with a mouth full of shattered teeth. Equius paid for the treatments and their hive and everything else with bootleg robotics sold online for cut-rate prices. It’s not like Nepeta got funding anywhere but from the state (but never call her an orphan; she’d fuck you up and brandish one of the cats she collected at you until you begged for mercy) and she’d been working for half a sweep, saving every penny she could until she could get. She couldn’t wrap for shit, so that had been Karkat’s job.

“ _Because there’s nobody more special_ ,” Nepeta had told him when Karkat asked. Blushing all over the place, the works. _“It’s just not right if he doesn’t get to have at least one special thing, you know?”_

See, that was serendipity. It was also exactly the wrong thing to think about right now, like the other two-hundred and seventeen topics Karkat had considered lately.

He wouldn’t even know what to give John. Grape soda, a stack of movies, fingers that were for holding hands. Nothing John would want.

“I ask because of Terezi,” Equius put forth delicately. “History is made to be learned from and yours suggests that there may be cause for concern.” Karkat closed his eyes, something leaden and painful twisting in his gut.                  
  
Equius’s concern beamed down like the start of a sunburn. Karkat dropped an arm over his eyes, trying to hide whatever ugly expression was crawling onto his face. “I’m good.”

Equius was quiet for a moment. “I believe that,” he said after that pause. Karkat had genuinely thought that quiet note to his voice was reserved for his crazy cat shipper girl. Seemed he even had the resident soulless engineer pitying him. Equius was surveying him very intensely when Karkat peered around his elbow. “You have changed.”

So had Equius. Unfair, Karkat had thought back then, when it was Terezi shattering everything in his chest. Not because of her _choice_ , but because of his feelings. They wouldn’t go away, just festered and itched inside of Karkat until he couldn’t take it. So Karkat went prowling the human streets for anything that could hit hard enough to blank out his thinkpan. Equius had found out and come to drag him away. Who wasn’t Equius stronger than, after all? And he’d come all shaking and sweating and hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to stop Karkat except offer to take the hits and Karkat had gotten very, very close to taking him up on it.

And here was now, so very calm, grave face tilted up in a hint of a smile. Karkat threw his arm back over his eyes. “Fuck off,” Karkat said, a little gentler. “I’m fine.”

“Yes,” Equius agreed, and he was gone.

The bathroom stayed mysteriously empty until Dave stuck his head into the bathroom to announce, “Yo, Egbert went home.”

“Thank fuck,” Karkat groaned, sitting up. He stretched, trying to unkink his neck. “I am sore in the worst sorts of places.” He kept his tone light. Dave wasn’t allowed to comment. He saw eyebrows raise over the shades, but that was all and then Karkat was stumbling back out to face his friends. Twice in a row, Vantas fucks up. Any applause?

Everybody kept smiling and their eyes were all full of knowing sympathy. Karkat about sprinted away, hands jammed in his pockets until Gamzee caught up and plopped a cool hand on the back of Karkat’s neck. That helped. Gamzee didn’t even try to offer him pity, just got mad on his behalf. No exploration of the emotional complexities of heartbreak. Karkat was glad to do hear him growl.

Dave had been right about John’s response too. Karkat watched the apologies fill up his screen, not really able to reply because he’d do one of two shitty things, and John didn’t need either of them, did he? And the answer to whether John had taken the girl home (that did seem to be the direction it was going in) was not something he needed to know. A moirail would ask.

Gamzee had retreated to the other side of the room, and was now just watching Karkat with very heavy eyes. Karkat kept getting his fingers to the keyboard, and they kept prying themselves back off.

This sucked.

EB: karkat i know you’re there.

EB: please answer me?

EB: you don’t have to forgive me, just let me know that you’re reading this?

EB: fuck

EB: can i call you?

How did the phone end up in Karkat’s hand? A mystery for us all.  
  
John’s voice was ragged on the other end. “I’m really, really sorry, Karkat. If there’s anything I can d—no, of course there’s not. I, okay. I deserve it if you hate me, just know I didn’t mean for you to see anything like that and I’m so sorry. That’s—I kept _telling_ you!” Karkat blinked. He recognized that choked up sound. Was John fucking crying? “You deserve better. You’re just really great—fuck, now it sounds like I’m trying to flatter you or something, oh my god, please say something.”

“John,” Karkat said, as Karkat of the Fucking Dumbass Crush got booted aside for the Karkat who was mildly competent. “Are you okay?” He had scenarios in his head about what a dumb drunk teenager might have done, or more specifically what might have been done to him—and when the line went quiet it was like having them confirmed.

“No, I—“ John huffed into the receiver. “I’m fine? Karkat…” Shit, he was definitely crying. “What are you even asking me that for?”

“Because you’re fucking expelling saline substances in the middle of a phone call!” Karkat burst out. _Because I can’t see you, and I can’t tell what’s wrong. You’re clade. The desire to protect you fucking_ hurts _when this happens_. “Where the hell are you? Are you home? Are you safe?”

“I’m fine,” John said again, but Karkat wasn’t having that at all. He was _crying_. Karkat had never once seen John get anywhere close to tears. He barely got mad. And now he expected Karkat not to react? Fuck him.

“Get to the park,” he said, because that sort of counted as neutral ground between human and troll neighborhoods. Fights didn’t happen there, not when upscale kids could scrape a knee. “I’ll meet you there. Twenty minutes.” That was as fast as Karkat could jog. He figured a rich kid could drive faster. 

John was already there when Karkat ran up, out of breath (oh god, it had been a while since he’d run this fast. Not all aspects of safety agreed with him) and looked up when Karkat arrived all nervous and jumpy. Eyes an angry red, a look on his face like someone had just punched a hole in him. Karkat’s gut twisted and he didn’t think twice about bundling John into his arms. Fuck his crush. The kid needed all the hugs he could get right now. John shivered against him with half-swallowed sobs.

“Karkat?”                  
  
“Shoosh,” Karkat murmured, papping John’s back because he wanted to keep him close. “Shoosh, come on, you have exactly zero reason to be crying. You are the least manly dumbass I know, shoosh.” In other circumstances, he’d have been bellowing in elation over the fact that he was holding John, but right now everything was focused on the tear tracks and the fact that John was hurt. Karkat pushed John to sit between the roots of one of those showy oak trees hanging around the park, just out of the way enough that this wouldn’t be humiliating. “Shoosh,” Karkat crooned again to be on the safe side, even though John’s eyes were fixated on him and he was crying perhaps quieter than anyone Karkat had ever heard. Karkat knelt down, trying to gauge whether John wanted him close or not. John leaned forward like his spine was snapping. His eyes got bigger, like he didn’t expect Karkat to catch him.

Karkat purred out the best reassurance he could, and John ended up half on him, staring like he was hypnotized, tears drying up as Karkat wiped them away, shooshpapping the ridiculous human with all the tenderness in the world. “Tell me what happened,” Karkat ordered (a lesson learned with Feferi; some assholes were really good at quieting down on the outside but still having all kinds of things mauling the inside of their pan. The full feelings jam was essential). John blinked at him, moisture illuminating his eyelashes, the sides of his cheeks, his chin. He fucking glowed even when he was sad. “Tell me,” Karkat insisted.

“I thought you’d hate me,” John muttered after a moment. “You… don’t?” Karkat snorted at the dumbfuck, tucking John’s head back onto his shoulder now that the worst of the tears had stopped. Stroked his hair. “You don’t,” John repeated with a little more certainty. He sounded stunned. “Holy _shit_ , Karkat.”

“Yeah, shit you’re full of,” Karkat muttered, and nuzzled John’s head flat when the human tried to lift it. God, his hair was soft enough to die for. “You’ve survived me ignoring your messages before. What are you so worried about?”

“I—last night,” John said, and there was the awkwardness Karkat recognized. Shy and having to come up with painful euphemisms. Worlds of difference between this guy and the one making out in Dave’s chair. “I, uh. In front of you, right after you... That wasn’t okay and…” He was quiet for a moment, and his voice came back confused, “…Are you sure you don’t hate me?”

Karkat grunted. “You were drunk.” _Do we have to talk about this? Can’t we just skip that part?_

John sniffled. “I shouldn’t have been drinking,”   He was quiet for a minute, just letting Karkat pet him. Karkat waited—there was a twenty minute limit and then he’d nag John into submission. John started talking again first. “I’ve been trying not to be, you know, that guy,” John said ruefully. “I think I… wanted to impress you.”

Karkat snorted again. It wasn’t like Karkat didn’t make an ass of himself all over the place without chemical assistance. He stroked through the downy fluff of John’s hair. “You don’t have to impress me, dumbass. Me _least_ of all—out of everybody, I mean. I fucking like you too much already.”

John laughed against him, sounding a little bitter. “Yeah, and it needs saying: that is so damn weird.”

Karkat wanted to take a swing at him for that, but this was about pacifying John, not the other way around. He took a deep breath instead. “Shut your fucking mouth. You’re…” And he had a bit of an epiphany then, staring through the leaves on the trees. Putting bits together. His brow wrinkled up. “John. You’re fucking worth liking, okay?” Anger started to rise through the back of his pan. “Was last night trying to convince me otherwise?” John didn’t say anything. Karkat growled. “ _Egbert_.”

“Ha,” John said after a moment. “Don’t you get it? I don’t have to try, Karkat.” As Karkat growled again, the human looked over at him, so beautiful and so fucking _sad_. There it was. That was why John kept feeling painful. They were all fucked up, but there was something outright wrong with John’s behavior, something festering under all those smiles. And he wouldn’t let Karkat clean any of it out, not even now, not even with his tears soaked through to Karkat’s skin.

“It’s not some big thing, come on,” John said, shrugging, tipping his voice lighter. “I’m just a screw up. Quit looking at me like that.” But at this point, no, John didn’t get to change the subject. He’d brought it up.

“John,” Karkat struggled to keep his voice level. Calm. This was a feelings jam, not an interrogation. “I don’t want to do anything that pisses you off, okay? But you’ve gotta give me more than that. If I made you cry—“

“No!” John exclaimed, whipping his head over to stare at Karkat. Karkat’s guts went tight and icy at the tears shining in his eyes. “No, come on, Karkat. You’re you. You’re so goddamn sweet it hurts. I just…” And there he went again, tears drifting down his cheeks, sinking against Karkat’s hands with his head bowed and his voice croaking out. “I don’t want us to be done, okay? Please? Not over this? I didn’t deserve to have you like me in the first place, but I can’t lose you either, and—“ He broke off, laughing wetly. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

“John,” Karkat breathed, heart starting to crack. “Fuck, you’re a moron. _John_. I pity you—I human-love you, even when you’re being a dipshit, there is no way you can fuck up bad enough—“

“Don’t count on that,” the human muttered, ears turned pink.

“No, shoosh,” Karkat soothed, croaking. “No way, do you understand? You don’t get to lose me. You’re clade, I’ve got you, I wouldn’t have lost my shit over you if you were anything less than stunning. You deserve it. Loving you is so, _so_ easy.” John squirmed, pulling away, and Karkat followed without a second thought, pressing for all he was worth, just trying to get through to this moron. “If it’s easier to hear as like, then yeah, I like you. I like you a _lot_. You’re—“ John was covering his ears. Karkat frowned, prying them away. “John?”

“Stop it,” John said miserably. “Cut it out.”                  
  
Karkat’s frown deepened. “Cut what out?”

 “Complimenting me,” John said. “I don’t want it. It’s weird, and yeah, now I _am_ uncomfortable.”                  
Alright, fine. “Then what can I do?” Karkat asked quietly. “How do I help you feel better?”

The way John looked up at him told Karkat what a weird question that was to ask.  Karkat didn't take it back.

“Jesus,” John said, a hint of a laugh in his voice. “This is one of those troll things, isn’t it? You’re taking this way too seriously. I’m just kind of having a shitty week, Karkat. It’s no big deal.”

Well, humans were a bit less likely to go on a murderous rampage from sudden emotional distress. But whoever had said clade was built around necessity was a complete prick. Karkat just didn’t want his family to be in pain. John blinked as Karkat stroked through his hair again. “John, you huge asshat,” Karkat sighed. “Do you want a hug?”

“Are you going to make it weird again?”

“No,” Karkat grumbled, not appreciating the suspicious look he was getting. The look intensified until Karkat’s eyebrows snapped together. “Do you want the damned hug or not?”

John wanted the hug.

An hour later, John wasn’t crying anymore, but he wouldn’t let go. Karkat had nowhere else to be and just leaned into gravity.


	5. Like It's Not Your Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which life goes on and plans are hatched, but mostly just life goes on.
> 
> The world does not end when your crush does not like you back, basically.
> 
> Also: oh crap, this chapter is short. I forgot about the chapter lengths for this story. I'll go back and fix it later.

That Friday the substitute had fortified the teacher’s desk with a couple stacks of homework and was giving herself a manicure. Karkat, similarly motivated, had leaned his chair back on two legs and hung a paperback over his eyes. He’d borrowed it from Rose. It was heavy, and the darkness made his eyes hurt less. Probably should have slept last night.  
  
He was kind of thinking of trying to make up for a little lost time—nap versus succumbing to gravity—when someone drummed a fingernail against the surface of his desk. Karkat lifted the corner of his book and ascertained that it was Rose. He grunted acknowledgment and let the end of the book back down.  
  
“It’s my birthday this weekend,” Rose told him tonelessly.  
  
“Congratulations,” Karkat offered, and yawned. He was pretty sure he could hear Dave snickering.  
  
“Dave’s apartment is being fumigated,” Rose said. “Again.” Karkat rolled his eyes behind the book cover.  
  
Karkat still liked his suggestion better—Dirk Strider, death match, whole legion of ninjas. Karkat believed this was the sort of thing Dirk Strider was capable of.  
  
“Sucks,” he told Rose, attempting and failing to sound genuine.  
  
“And yet John claims that he is busy this weekend and therefore cannot come meet me at the library,” Rose went on. When Karkat didn’t answer, just silently cursed John out for being gullible, Rose said, smirk in her voice, “We both know that John Egbert is _never_ too busy for me.”  
  
“Shut up, Lalonde,” Karkat grumbled, and half-heartedly attempted to kick her chair. “Your smugness is about to reach critical mass and disrupt the Earth’s gravitational field.”  
  
“I do hate surprises,” Rose warned him. “As I recall, we had this discussion once. I believe it involved a thermos of soup. I believe the soup went into your lap.”  
  
The great thing about uninterested substitute teachers was that they didn’t care if you flipped off the girl sitting next to you.  
  
Besides, _obviously_ Karkat knew Rose had a problem with surprises. It was precisely why he’d planned one for her. His intellect wasn’t be questioned.  
  
“The only reason you hate surprises,” Karkat muttered, “Is because when you don’t manage to figure out everything ahead of time, it bothers you.” Silence answered him, along with the sound of muffled giggles—not Dave, this time. How many people, precisely, were spying on this conversation?  
  
This was just sad. If they weren’t going to suffer through a math lesson, why shouldn’t Karkat just claim a corner as territory? Huddled up, their clade could be more efficiently nosy about each other.  
  
Although maybe Karkat could at least make it twenty-four hours without one of them getting called into the assistant principal’s office to listen to a rousing discussion on why gangs weren’t condoned on school property. Not, you know, that Karkat didn’t love staring down a balding human from behind two feet of solid wood and a policeman outside the door, but he hated living down to their expectations. He’d been fine until the bastard asked about whether he and his trolls were bullying the humans. After that his mouth had opened.  
  
Detention had been inevitable, and the only thing that made it better was Dave sitting next to him, and snorting, “No, it’s cool, he asked me the same shit. Like me and my,” the finger quotes have come out, oh good, Dave is feeling murderous too, “’problem children friends’ are capable of blackmailing a dozen trolls into doing our bidding.”  
  
“Are you saying you’re not?”  
  
Dave aimed a look at Karkat over his shades, “Have you ever tried manipulating TZ to,” he waved a hand, “I don’t know, hand you a textbook? And then there’s Vriska. And then there’s both of them together.”  
  
“Point.”  
  
“That is it!” The detention monitor burst out. “What part of no talking don’t you understand?!”  
  
Karkat’s journey through the school’s punitive system aside, Rose was giving him a look.  
  
“It’ll be cold, full of people for you to psychoanalyze, and probably will involve bloodshed. You’ll love it.”  
  
“And will it involve you telling me what it is?”  
  
Ha. “No.”  
  
“Very well.”  
  
And then the evil girl human kicked Karkat’s chair out from under him. Karkat proceeded to glower at the back of her neck for the rest of the class period. It proved pointless to glare at Dave, who just laughed hysterically every time there was eye contact. If Karkat had possessed a phone, he would have texted John a warning. Rose now knew something was coming and had fourteen kids to try to wrench the answers out of in the next twenty-four hours. They were probably doomed.  
  
The night before the party, though, Rose still didn’t seem to know what was going on if her temper was anything to go by. Karkat deemed it time to face the closet. He didn’t own anything fancy, but in his natural state, Gamzee got asked to leave locations where there were small children present. Crabdad screeched half the night through about Karkat commandeering the iron but honestly, the stupid crustacean thought that the way you used it was to hit the offending article of clothing with the electrical cord. Their shirts needed to be ironed. Karkat did it himself and then forced a whining Gamzee to get dressed. After some deliberation, he called Sollux about a belt. Sollux was, like Gamzee, offensively skinny enough to need one to keep his pants up. These jeans had come from a goodwill bin, but they didn’t have stains or holes and that was good enough for him.  
  
As for Karkat, he looked horrible as ever, but he’d painstakingly yanked a comb through his hair and found clean socks. Clean socks were key. It’s not like anyone would see them, but he somehow felt like just by merit of their being worn, he would draw less strange looks.  
  
So Gamzee looked a little bit insane and Karkat was going to look like a thug even if you put him in a three-piece suit, so he’d, you know, done his best. Karkat got very, very close to calling Feferi for tips on how to look convincingly upstanding. He also realized midway through his extensive pesterchum rant to John Egbert—who was far more amused than helpful, damn him—that he’d stopped lecturing and started furtively seeking advice on how to dress. John kept assuring him that Karkat didn’t have to get dressed up, but Karkat figured John lived in a happy world where smiling got you out of trouble and horns didn’t get you into it.  
  
This place was human territory. Terezi had suggested they go to one of the weirdo carnivals that the indigos had been shuffling around the city since October, and Karkat loved his clade, but he was not blind to the lack of horns. The dark carnival was not a place for humans. Human establishments might be dicks to troll customers, but they pretty reliably didn’t resort to assault as a form of reprimand.  
  
Karkat’s reflection in the mirror did not look very convinced of its ability to not get thrown out. “Great,” he muttered. He had no one but himself to blame. It had been his idea to actually take Rose out, and Kanaya’s plan had been a good one and Karkat was determined not to be the guy who fucked it all up.  
  
Could you look like a gangster and a dork at the same time? Had Karkat just started a trend? John was definitely going to laugh at him, wasn’t he.  
  
In the end, Gamzee had to bodily remove Karkat from in front of the mirror.  
  
The trolls started massing around Tavros’s hive in the morning, half to get their numbers up before venturing into the human side of town and half to pass around food. By the time Karkat had managed to bully Equius into eating something (instead of telling blatant lies about how well stocked his larder was; god, it was like herding cats), John made his appearance.  
  
He hadn’t done anything to class up his act.  Why would he need to? So here you had Karkat, definitively lacking any excuse to stare. The rest of his clade, sure—he’d been impressed as shit about how they’d cleaned up. He’d like the see the teachers accuse them of being a gang now; they looked upstanding as teenagers could get. But John just fit in with ease, like just being out under the sunlight was enough to make him look like— _shit_ , he looked like—  
  
Oh Christ, Karkat needed to stop with the staring. Friends. Right.  
  
He could do this.  
  
“Hi, Karkat,” John said.  
  
Karkat responded by kicking out a leg to trip him. John stumbled, shot him an evil look. Karkat finger waved. “Hi, dweeb.”  
  
John leaned against Dave’s shoulder, stage-whispering, “Did the comb eat his loved ones?”  
  
“Worse,” Dave answered gravely, “It stole the rest of his horns.”  
  
Karkat flipped them both off in the spirit of friendship.  
  
When they got there, Rose answered her door with a scowl, which meant she hadn’t figured it out yet. Karkat raised a hand in greeting. He had two widely grinning individuals to his left and right and a whole pack of gleeful clade members at his back. Rose’s doorstep was overflowing. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly.  
  
“Ms. Lalonde,” Kanaya crooned from Karkat’s right, holding out a pale hand with a flourish. “If you would be so good as to permit us to escort you on your most auspicious wriggling day?”  
  
Karkat had spent a good portion of the walk here smirking at her while she alternately blushed or jammed an elbow into his side. Kanaya’s hair was as rigorously combed into submission as his own, that _had_ to be new lipstick, and he was pretty sure she’d sewn her dress just for this occasion. Only whereas Karkat was desperately shooting for normal, Kanaya was really only second to Feferi in terms of bank. She didn’t have access to any of it until she was eighteen, but she was smarter than anyone else. The clothes she sold in local design shops had gotten her a much nicer hive than Karkat’s, and Karkat couldn’t imagine anyone successfully telling her where she could and could not go.  
  
She looked really good today and Rose’s frown deepened at the sight. There was a bit of color blooming in her cheeks, though, and Karkat noticed she hadn’t looked away. Aha. “Is this a _formal_ occasion?” She asked in a sigh. “I would have appreciated forewarning.”  
  
“Oh no,” Karkat responded. “Bloodshed, remember? Come on, we’re meeting Aradia and Feferi there. I don’t want to find out what those two get up to if they’re left alone.” He calculated, and eased back to step on Eridan’s foot. The chortling cut off with an indignant squawk.  
  
They so had this in the bag.


	6. Delirious Happiness and Other Flavors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the second half of the first chapter I posted like a moron going 'oh, that word count must be right! Tee hee!'
> 
> Tee hee was added for dramatic purposes. There is no tee hee in this domain. All who tee hee will be executed by fire.
> 
> Also, if this chapter doesn't get you... welp. Move along.

“You have brought me to a skating rink,” Rose observed when they arrived. Her tone did not suggest emotion. Karkat, who was currently fending off John’s attempts to mess up his hair, took a risk and glanced over. Rose’s face was expressionless, but Kanaya had successfully worked her way to hand-holding during some part of the trip, hadn’t she? Maybe not everyone would be excruciatingly culled, th—   
  
Karkat growled and kicked John in the knee. His treacherous body seized up at the last second. Humans who weren’t Dave were… delicate. Karkat aggressively smoothed his hair back.   
  
“You look like your name should be Giovanni,” John stage-whispered.   
  
“You look like your name should be _dead meat_!” Karkat hissed back. His hair was springing through his fingers and Karkat was mortified. It was entirely possible that whatever troll majjiks had been worked upon it to keep it down were no longer effective. Why did John need to keep prodding it too? Karkat bit his lip and looked away.   
  
“Do you like it?” Kanaya was asking.  
  
“Oh yes,” Rose said, her voice warming. “I may have to revise my opinion. For a surprise, this exceeds merely intrusive and extends into the territory of heartwarming.” You could basically hear when two people entered the kind of stupid awkward smiling thing that was the inevitable point of crushes. Karkat very carefully did not look over at them. He ended up having to clear his throat twice, because apparently somehow his clade had forgotten Karkat’s drills on the way over. But then they finally shut up and he heard Rose go “what—?”   
  
“ONE, TWO, THREE!” Jade bellowed at the top of her lungs and they burst into song in unison. “Happy wriggling day to you! Happy—“   
  
“Oh, you little shits,” Rose muttered. Karkat looked over at her (while howling the song as loudly as he could) and she was nicely pink around the edges. Grinning a little too, though fighting it, so he was counting this as a definite win. They burst into applause at the end, everyone crowded in on Rose, laughing and cheering as she tried to grumble at them. In the chaos, Aradia leaned over and thumped a horn upside Rose’s head. The rest of the trolls were all blushing, because even if Rose didn’t have horns, that was, well, _you know_. It’s not like they’d even been clade for that long either, but Aradia defiantly lifted her chin and—hell, who was Karkat kidding? He wanted to do it too. Nepeta threw her arms around Rose and Karkat was pretty sure she was going for a hornlock as well. He resisted the urge to just cover his eyes. John was shouting over the rest of them in Karkat’s ear (“wait, did that mean something? You’re all red”) and then Aradia took off for the front door of the skating rink and John changed strategies.   
  
He threw himself at the doors, taking an alarmed Karkat with him by the elbow. “Come on!” He shouted. “We can’t lose!”   
  
So basically he set off a stampede.   
  
The employees eventually managed to restore order and get an orderly line formed. The rink was cheap enough for fees not to be a major issue, but there were still a handful of wadded up ones circulating back and forth along the line. Karkat got glared at specifically, though not because of his hair. Apparently paying the four dollar rental cost in nickels and dimes was going to bring down the apocalypse. He glared right back without thinking, then remembered he was supposed to be being an upstanding young troll. Forgot it again because John—who was having some sort of minor dispute with Jade that involved them both calling each other very ridiculous names—crashed into Karkat’s back. The last thing Karkat felt was upstanding. He gripped the edge of the counter like his life depended on it.   
  
“John,” Karkat growled very calmly, “If you two don’t shut the hell up, I will plant my lips and physically enforce silence, I swear to god.”   
  
He’d never seen John’s eyes get quite that round, but that was fair; Karkat’s were probably also pushing the laws of physics.   
  
Then John burst into explosive laughter. Karkat’s heart shuddered back into motion and he joined in and they were all laughing. His heart beat out of his chest and ached against the floor and god, it was easier to laugh BUT THEY WERE FRIENDS.   
  
Had crushes always sucked this much? Karkat was almost positive it had been better with Terezi.   
  
There weren’t enough skates, so Karkat volunteered to wait. John, Vriska, and Eridan piled onto the bench with him. Terezi tried to volunteer too, but they chased her onto the ice and now she was wobbling along, clutching Dave’s sides for dear life. Dave looked ever so satisfied with the state of existence. Everyone looked satisfied, except Eridan, who kept complaining about how this just wasn’t the way water was meant to be used. Vriska eventually put a hand over his mouth and her face made it entirely clear that he was licking her hand. John’s knees bounced with excitement, gaze riveted to the ice.  
  
“I take it you like it here?” Karkat asked amused. John threw a huge smile his way.  
  
“I mean, I go to the one in Northern park, generally. But yeah.” He fastened his fingers together. Karkat was struck by the need to purr at the sight. “Pretty much anything where I can go this fast. And I can go _fast_ on the ice.” His smile went fierce enough to fill Karkat’s stomach with problematic feelings. “Watch me. You’ll be impressed as hell.”   
  
Karkat was already impressed. That was kind of the problem here.  
  
…And Vriska was giving him the pity eyes. Oh hell no.  
  
“Hey, Eridan.” Eridan flicked a fin to indicate his attention. “Remember last summer? When we found out Vriska was ticklish?” Vriska’s flew wide.   
  
Turns out she had trouble telling Karkat how dead he was when she was curled up in a wheezing ball with a cackling Ampora poking her in the side repeatedly. Karkat leaned back, content with his impending doom, and his clade’s happiness, and at Rose’s continued annual existence, and at the boy at his side. He also approved of the cool sting on his cheeks helping explain away the blushed consequences of the boy at his side.  
  
“Skates are up!” As Karkat looked, a couple of humans were headed on their way out, collecting shoes and jackets strewn around the benches. “Two of you can—“ Vriska and Eridan were already racing over like excited puppies. John made a face.  
  
“Aw, but I was actually looking at the ice! I want it more, you dicks!”  
  
Vriska held her skates high and triumphant and waggled them back and forth at John’s pout. Karkat rearranged his legs on the bench. As long as John didn’t look over to see it even if Karkat’s expression was getting obviously lovestruck, it was okay. He waved John off as soon as the next set of skates was available.   
  
“Go show off,” Karkat told him with a grin. “Enjoy the satisfying, albeit brief period of time in which you don’t eat my dust.” John puffed up like he wanted to argue. His eyes kept drifting towards the ice. Karkat just pointed.   
  
“Okay, but—but—but you’d _better_ use all of your troll brain powers to get on the ice as soon as possible! I mean it! I’m talking T-minus 0 impending Karkat!” And then John finally gave up and bounded over to collect his skates.   
  
When he hit the ice he hobbled like the rest of them. Karkat grinned through his fingers. Then John lurched past Karkat’s vantage point, grinned right at Karkat, and took off.  
  
Well, slap Karkat upside the horns. John was right.   
  
He darted through a cluster of their clade and then the ice seemed to tip sideways, because John moved like falling. He was so quick. He ducked lower, and just streaked in and out through the crowd of people. With his hair blown back and his legs pumping, this inexplicable laugh bubbled up in Karkat’s throat just watching him. It tangled up in his chest.  
  
For the first time, Karkat couldn’t see that strange, bottled up sadness on his face, because John had just outrun it. Karkat grinned into his palms and shook the hair out of his eyes and cheered as John shot by again, encouraging him to go faster. Kanaya was laughing at him and if this were not an establishment for little kids too, Karkat would have told her where he could shove it. He stuck his tongue out instead and Kanaya fell over laughing—Rose stopped to help her up and Karkat had to look away, blushing because they were blushing and his eyes fell back on John and he thought with the same kind of helpless enthusiasm as when he’d first realized he was losing his shit over this kid, _Oh my god, I fucking love him_.  
  
He just _did_. How was he supposed to undo that?  
  
So Karkat took his shaky hands and reportedly sleazy inability to quit perving on the human outside. He collapsed against the bricks outside of the building. Yeah, human territory and all. But he was only going to be here for a moment, Karkat promised himself.   
  
It was cold enough to see his breath—Karkat blew out clouds of it like a dork and rubbed his hands to keep them warm and couldn’t keep the damn smile off of his face. Karkat didn’t have a great smile, and there were a few humans who didn’t seem to be in too much hurry to leave this little corner of the universe, shooting him unfriendly looks. They kept their distance and Karkat hummed and shivered and experienced delirious happiness that felt like really wanting to cry.   
  
Fuck, he didn’t even know if he was trying to start a fight, but it didn’t come. Karkat’s exuberant clade of misfits came crashing back outside _long_ before these humans recovered their pasty human shame globes. Karkat’s his face had pretty much frozen in the same smile he’d been working with since the morning. Half of them were chattering a mile a minute and the other half were just laughing and shouting. He was able to ascertain that someone had gotten hungry and Rose had suggested Denny’s again. Dave thumped a fist into his shoulder. “Dude. Where’d you go?”   
  
“Just taking a walk,” Karkat told him—Gamzee caught his eye and tilted his head. Karkat shook his. Nothing like that. Dave’s eyebrows had drawn down by the time he looked back.  
  
“You know—“   
  
“Denny’s!” Jade exclaimed, intercepting John before he (frowning at Karkat, mouthing _where’d you go?_ ) could collapse Karkat into even sappier mush than he already was. She caught him in a chokehold and grinned as John flailed. “Denny’s! Food! Let’s march!”   
  
Terezi had climbed onto Dave’s back, demanding a piggyback ride—Karkat was trying to convince her to get back down and walk like a normal troll. He was going to sing Rose a really obnoxious happy birthday in the restaurant again. Maybe get some free shit.   
  
“Hey,” an unfamiliar voice called out sharply. “You kids. You alright? These trolls giving you any trouble?”  
  
“No,” he heard Rose say, and Karkat looked and saw… a lot more humans.  
  
Shit. Too many. Where had they come from? Karkat’s own expression hardened as he recognized one of them from the skating rink, and two from his little staring contest.   
  
“Is there a problem?” Kanaya asked, voice clipped. Karkat let air out between his teeth slowly, eyes darting. Dave was already shoving forward, trying to get himself between Rose and the newcomers. Karkat was looking for a way out. This couldn’t come to a fight, not with the whole clade here. Maybe half of them could handle themselves and the rest were—they were _Karkat’s_ , his responsibility to protect. No one touched them.   
  
Fucking human territory. He could only guess where was safe.   
  
“I don’t think I like your tone,” the human said, and his hand snapped out. Karkat heard it connect. Kanaya went stumbling back and Rose’s shout hit the air and Karkat—   
  
“ _Hey!_ ” John gasped, but Karkat was already past him, his snarl on his lips as he charged.


End file.
